The battle's done, and we kind of won, so we sound our victory cheer: where do we go from here?
... a blog by Marc Lynch

October 03, 2008

where strategic communication leads

The Washington Post reports today that the Defense Department
"will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the
next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and
public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to
"engage and inspire" the local population to support U.S. objectives
and the Iraqi government." In contrast to earlier efforts, where there was supposedly always a "produced by MNF-I" label, these efforts explicitly will not have such attribution. As one official explains, "They don't know that the originator of the content is the U.S. government. If they did, they would never run anything."

These sorts of efforts exemplify all of the problems with strategic communications vs public diplomacy at which I hinted on Tuesday. It's easy to see why eager information warriors think that paying for positive press makes sense in pursuit of tactical advantage in the strategic propaganda war. It gets the "messaging" out with greater credibility, it "counters" the adversaries efforts, and it might shift some perceptions in the short term. Even at this level, the strategy is deeply flawed. When the payments are exposed, as they inevitably are in today's global media environment (for example, with page one stories in the Washington Post), they then discredit not only the specific messages but also every other pro-U.S. message which will quite reasonably then be dismissed as "paid for by the United States." At our panel this week, Mike Doran and others suggested that the key to success in the "war of ideas" is building up credible third party messengers. Nothing could be more devastating to the credibility of third party messengers than this kind of program.

At a deeper level, these efforts fatally compromise the long-term objective of building free, credible and independent media as the foundation of a democratic system. I've argued many times that support for free and independent media should be at the center of all efforts to promote reform in the region. Only a free and independent media can provide the flow of information, the transparency and demands for accountability, and the open contestation of political ideas necessary for real political pluralism and democracy. Turning the media into a tool for spreading propaganda compromises not only the very media which we should be promoting but also our own credibility in arguing for a free and independent media.

The other obvious point is that current "war of ideas" and COIN thinking explicity considers U.S. public opinion an important domain of information warfare. The Post quotes from the contract solicitation this passage which should be deeply disturbing: one goal is to "communicate effectively with our strategic audiences (i.e. Iraqi,
pan-Arabic, International, and U.S. audiences) to gain widespread
acceptance of [U.S. and Iraqi government] core themes and messages." Presenting American audiences as a key target for manipulation through the covert dissemination of propaganda messages should be seen as scandalous, subversive of democracy, and illegal. Let's hope this story finally gets some attention to trends I've been tracking for years.

Comments

We should ask ourselves what getting a story "some attention" means in the current environment in Washington.

To most people, it means making some aspect of a story an issue in the fall campaign. That plainly is not in the cards for this one. The American system, though, is set up to enable at least two other possibilities: that the administration taking office in 2009 will change current policy, and that current policy will be subjected to scrutiny from Congress (which can, if it chooses, inhibit or even block a policy it disapproves from being implemented).

I'm not the first person to note that the second possibility is more theoretical than practical in Washington today. Congress as an institution does not decide to act on policy issues as specific as this one; what it has more commonly done in the past is respond to specific Congressmen and Senators holding key positions on the relevant authorizing and appropriations committees and having strong views about the subject in question. As power in Congress has been concentrated increasingly in the leadership of the majority party and in the two appropriations committees, this check on executive discretion has atrophied -- a condition accelerated by the now-continual attention most Congressmen and Senators feel they must spend on the permanent campaign, in which public diplomacy does not figure at all.

That leaves a policy change by a new administration sometime next year. It is certainly possible, but who will make it happen? What will be the extent and duration of the policy change? How will the considerable inertia built up within the Defense Department and the military leadership in Iraq behind this idea of strategic communication be overcome? And when, given the many more urgent questions that will press on a new administration with regard to Iraq and foreign affairs more generally this January, could any policy change in this area be expected to be decided upon, and be implemented? -- this is actually two questions, which may have very different answers.

I know this is getting a little far "in the weeds" for regular readers of this site, and I apologize for that. People unfamiliar with how the American system of government and American electoral politics interact may not appreciate how the end of any administration -- especially one that has been in office for eight years -- is bound to bring about questions not only about what should be done, but also about how to do what should be done. The decay of Congressional oversight, and the omnipresence of campaign politics in Washington for much longer periods of time than used to be the case, makes some of these questions at once more urgent and more difficult to answer.